Jenseits der Spree

Just four one-hour episodes into which the writers, working from a template, tried to crowd in personal details and backgrounds of the two cop protagonists. It didn't work. I wasn't interested in the three children of the Robert Heffler character nor that he was suffering from possible PTSD after a shooting in a terrorist incident that went wrong - this is not a spoiler, by the way, we see this in the very first scene. Likewise the heavy hints about why Kay Freund as his partner has sudden addictions to types of food and retches after a visit to the morgue. It doesn't drive the plot along at all and it isn't (and can't be) properly developed or explored in a series of just four hours.

If only we had some similar hints as to the murderers! I only guessed correctly in one of the shows because it was possible to do so. In the others, motivations and even characters were introduced just before the denouement, more or less.

The main characters remained two dimensional. It would have been better for them to simply be investigating crimes as part of episodes of forty minutes, missing out the family and personal stuff. It would have made for tauter programmes. There were hints of a deeper (previous?) relationship between Heffler and his boss, but what was the relevance of it? It didn't affect the development of the stories.

I have no idea if this has been commissioned for a another outing. On the evidence of what I have seen, I'd doubt it.